He Maple Leafs‘ stanley cup the hunt is not over yet. Toronto kept their season alive with a 2-1 victory over the panthers in Game 4, moving the 3-1 Florida series to Scotiabank Arena for Game 5 on Friday.
A big reason the Maple Leafs fell into a 3-0 hole is because their top four scorers… John Tavares, auston matthews, William Nylander and Mitch Marner, have struggled long, failing to score a single goal in the series. However, Nylander and Marner flipped the script on Wednesday, scoring a goal each to give Toronto exactly enough offensive power to survive another day.
Nylander opened the game’s scoring at 3:39 of the second period, and Marner made the Leafs’ lead a bit more comfortable by adding an own goal at 10:03 of the third.
Florida responded with a sam reinhart goal two minutes after Marner’s score, but it turned out to be all the offense the Panthers could muster. Maple Leafs goalie Joseph Woll he was instrumental in shutting down the Panthers’ offense, earning 24 saves on 25 shots in his first playoff start. Ilya Samsonovthe Leafs’ regular goalkeeper, he missed the match with an upper body injury.
With the series heading to Toronto for Game 5, the Maple Leafs will enter hoping to become the fifth team to NHL playoff history to successfully come back from a 3-0 deficit. The Panthers are hoping to wrap things up and move on to their first Eastern Conference final since 1996.
Game 5 will take place on Friday at a time yet to be determined.
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